How to Measure SEO Effectiveness For Your Online Business

Measuring the effectiveness of your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts is critical in the success of your business. Only when you have the figures can you determine if your online marketing strategies are working or if there are some areas that need improvement and polishing.

However, finding out if your SEO decisions are effective is a little more complicated than you think, as it deals with a lot of tools and measurement strategies. But then again aiming for the top ranks on the major search engines such as Google will require you to master a wide array of tools and to be creative in your approach, including how you measure your performance.

There are four ways to measure success in SEO – indexation measurements, backlink measurements, rankings measurements, and traffic and revenue measurements. These four might be big words, but all of them are related and work in unison.

Indexation Measurements

Your indexation measurements will tell you if the search engines have properly identified all of the pages in your website. Of course, who would want to run a website that only has a single, recognizable page?

This is the first critical step at assessing your website's natural search performance. You need to have all your web pages indexed by the search engines in order to rank.

Backlink Measurements

Backlink measurements will tell you the number of internal and external links (coming from different websites all over the internet) that point to your website in general. The rule of thumb in search engine link building is this – the more external backlinks your website gets, the higher it will rank in all the natural search engine results.

Ranking Measurements

Your ranking measurements will show where in the natural search engine results your website pops up at a given key word or phrase. However, measuring a website's ranking measures can get a little tricky.

You can measure your website's ranking measurement in two ways – targeted and aggregate. The former will ask you to choose a certain set of keywords that you will target based on keyword research; the latter will let you track the page on which a certain term or phrase ranks for every keyword that provides natural search to your website.

Traffic and Revenue Measurements

Your traffic and revenue measurements will tell you the specific keywords used by internet users to find your website. It will also tell you the revenue your website receives per keyword, as well as the percentage of visitors that buy your products within a certain period of time.

All these four will help you determine if you have been using the right search engine optimization techniques. But then again, keep in mind that there are no "right" or "wrong" values.